I love living in a leafy environment. It’s therefore quite upsetting when I get experts telling me that it’s best to have several trees chopped down to avoid the risk to my house or those of my neighbours before windy weather threatens.

Today’s invention is a small, automated chainsaw system which can be attached to the base of a potentially dangerous tree and left there for the long-term.

This would be suitably camouflaged in shape and texture to make its presence less noticeable.

A wire on an extensible reel, would be run from the saw to near the top of the tree.

When the wire was stretched beyond a safe limit, by a storm-force wind, the chainsaw would fire up and fell the tree.

The saw would be placed so that the direction of fall would always be away from the nearest property.

A watched kettle never boils, it’s said. Today’s invention is a way to help limit that awful feeling, when engaged in some boring activity, that time is standing still.

Imagine a watch which can sense when you look at its face (which might easily be arranged by having a camera and software which recognises your face on board).

If the device sensed that you were clockwatching and therefore bored, it would automatically supply you with some email to deal with on its screen, an instant messenger client to talk to other bored participants in a mtg or even a brief games break.

I see a lot of minimal, fixed-gear bikes around town, ridden by urban hipsters -with mudstained cargo pants.

This is because they refuse to spoil the aesthetic of their bare-bones rides with anything as utilitarian as a mudguard.

Today’s invention is therefore a covert mudguard. It takes the form of a transparent plastic cylinder split along its underside.

This fits inside the crossbar, which is open at the rear end.

On wet days, the rider extracts the cylinder just far enough for it to spring outwards a little laterally and thus form an effective deflector for the flying street grime.

I’ve been introduced recently to the rich culture of those who maintain the railway infrastructure. I had always before regarded them as responsible only for all those ‘points failures’ which make me frequently late.

It turns out that there is a huge amount of skill and engineering insight required to cope with some of the weird and subtle physics that tracks can exhibit.

One such issue is to do with tracks which have vegetation growing nearby. If, in very warm weather, this shades one rail more than the other, the entire system of track, sleepers and ballast distorts locally -not what you want when trains are barrelling through at 100+ mph.

Cutting the grass/ferns/bushes manually is hugely costly and attaching blades to the trains might threaten public safety -to say nothing of the permissions required to chop down trees.

Sleepers are normally of uniform material over very long stretches of line. Today’s invention is therefore to fit a few trains with thermal cameras which can detect differences in rail temperature. This would then enable replacement of a few concrete or hardwood sleepers with steel ones, in areas found to suffer from differential shading.

It might be necessary to insert eg a copper* gasket between rail and sleeper.

This would allow more effective thermal conduction between the two rails and much more uniform track temperature (and geometry maintenance) but without having to re-lay large sections of track.

*Maybe not such a smart idea, given the possible electrochemical interactions ie rust?

Gumshields, otherwise known as ‘mouthguards’ are worn by hundreds of athletes and schoolchildren.

Many no doubt relish looking like an ardent international rugby player or a rampaging boxing champ. Many, especially females, don’t.

This is a problem in that reluctance to wear such protection may leave them vulnerable.

Any parent who has watched their daughter play hockey will cringe at the memory of that white sphere streaking by at face height.

Today’s invention is therefore a mouthguard which has printed on it a photographic image of the wearer’s actual teeth.

This would be suitably scaled and processed to look normal in the mouth (rather than forming a horsey grin).

It would thus provide no disincentive to the wearing of dental protection – which, after all, is of highest importance to the most image-conscious.

It makes me a little testy when travelling on a train and my progress to the lavatory is impeded by someone trying to push a huge cart of overpriced catering goodies between the seats.

This tends to get in everyone’s way and also cause bruising to anyone whose shoulders extend even slightly outside the allotted seat width.

Today’s invention is therefore a vending machine for trains (which might also work aboard passenger aircraft).

Members of the travelling public could call the machine which runs on rollers riding on the luggage rack as shown, using either a seat panel or their mobile phone.

The machine would have a clear underside displaying the goods on sale, together with push buttons and payment slots which could be manually operated overhead or via smartphone.

Items purchased would each drop into a collection slot.

Thus, these purchases could be made with no interruption to the flow of people within the carriage.

Headlights are currently operated at either dipped or full beam.

Today’s invention attempts to be a more effective, generalised version of this ancient regime.

Each vehicle would carry reflectors at front and rear in a shaped frame.

Each car would have a camera facing forwards which would detect the shaped reflector(s) anywhere ahead of it.

If one’s headlights were reflecting too brightly from the reflector of another car, one’s own headlights would automatically dip, just enough to avoid it.

This would provide maximal range of view using one’s headlights but still not dazzle oncoming drivers or those travelling in front.

A different version might be based on a lightmeter in each vehicle. If it detected too high a brightness, it could send a message to deflect one’s own lights.

Thus, your lights would be controlled externally.